


Dear Rose

by TheHuggamugCafe



Series: He’s Crazy For You [2]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Jealousy, Tumblr request, husband/wife, incubus!Arsène, yandere!incubus!Arsène
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-15 00:34:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16923258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheHuggamugCafe/pseuds/TheHuggamugCafe
Summary: In your husband’s eyes, in Arsène’s eyes, you were very much like a rose.Delicate, vibrant, and beautiful; and yet, even roses had their thorns.You had your flaws, shortcomings, and made mistakes, but that was fine; you were human, after all.He loved you. He loved everything about you, whether it was good or bad.You were everything to him. Everything.His human. His wife. His most treasured rose. The light to his darkness. The yin to his yang.Forever.





	Dear Rose

**Author's Note:**

> Gift to an anon on Tumblr. Thank you very much for placing this unsettling order, dear customer. Also, my thanks to a fellow writer for assisting me with this when I was stuck with it a few months ago.

The day that Arsène Lupin got on one knee, held out a small velvet box with a very expensive-looking ring inside in one hand, and gently held your hand in his, asking you to share your life with him as his wife was the happiest day of your life.

“My dear rose. You have enraptured me from the moment I met you. You have done this demon a great service by staying by his side… Will you continue to do so? Not as my lover, but as my wife?”

You still recalled how your eyes had welled up with tears, nearly blubbering like a newborn baby as you threw your arms over his shoulders, clinging to him as you screamed, “Yes, Arsène!” over and over again.

You’d been overjoyed, too overjoyed to see the dark, almost evil smile that curled Arsène’s lips as you continued to chant the words “yes!” and “Arsène!” over and over again.

You remembered being on the verge of tears on your wedding day.

You remembered Arsène chuckling as he raised his hands, using his thumbs to wipe away the tears away from your cheeks.

You were pretty sure Arsène briefly slipped his tongue into your mouth, smiling into the first kiss you both shared as a newlywed couple, just as the priest announced you both to be husband and wife.

You were certain that you wept heartily as Arsène mesmerized the guests attending the wedding, leading you into your first dance as a married duo.

You remembered so many wonderful things.

But, overall, more than that…

You remembered being happy.

You remembered being content with your life.

You remembered feeling like you lingered in paradise, walled-off from the rest of the world, thinking that no hellfire could possibly reach you and ruin your little slice of heaven.

To you, it was ridiculous. It couldn’t possibly happen; not to you, of all people.

The thought never once crossed your mind. No, you refused to believe it.

It was impossible for Hell’s scorching heat to touch you, even if it was in a metaphorical sense.

How foolish you’d been… How idiotic you’d been to not see the invisible shackles clasped around your wrists, to not see that not only had you all but consented to being bound to him…

But that he was the one who clasped them around your wrists to begin with, and he smiled as he took your freedom away, slowly but surely.

You never took into account that the one you should be wary of was the man who asked for your hand in marriage, not once.

In your defence, why would you _not_ trust your newlywed husband, Arsène Lupin?

He appeared to be quite angelic in nature, despite his actual origins.

He radiated an aura of compassion, love, and understanding.

He was nothing but a kind, dutiful husband, a gentleman who was always at the top of his game.

Yes, his smile was reminiscent of an ethereal being, whispering sweet words of honeyed affection into your ears whenever he held you in his arms.

“I love you, my dear rose.”

“I have never seen one myself, but… I am sure that I can thank a God, or Gods, for blessing me with good fortune.”

“For I have never known true happiness until I met you.”

“I will do whatever it takes to ensure that no one disrupts my peaceful days with you.”

If only you took into account just how serious, how sincere he’d been at the time.

He was smiling, always smiling at you.

Yes, for he held your heart—no, your very soul it seemed—in the palms of his hands.

However…

His reddish orange gaze never once strayed from you.

His firebrand irises never looked away from you.

Sometimes, he’d hold you a bit too tightly, a bit too possessively.

Sometimes, his worry for your safety went far beyond the boundaries of what people would call “normal.”

Your husband, Arsène Lupin, was the one who held the key to your restricted freedom, both metaphorically and realistically speaking.

Everything changed after your two-week honeymoon.

Everything happened slowly, gradually, set to a snail’s pace, but…

Suddenly, he became suspicious of men you’d known for years.

_“Who was that man you were talking to, dear?”_

_“Oh, he’s just a friend of mine, Arsène. We went to middle school together.”_

_“I see.”_

_“Mm-hm. He asked me out at work. There’s a restaurant he wants to go to, so we can catch up.”_

_“…He asked you out?”_

_“As friends, of course. I haven’t gotten back to him about accepting his offer yet, though.”_

You’d never get the chance to take your friend—your decidedly _male friend_ —up on his offer at a dinner date, a date strictly between friends. A few hours out on the town, talking, laughing, reminiscing about your school days, asking questions about how you were and such…

Gone.

A golden opportunity to catch up with an old friend… wasted.

It was a choice you’d never get to make, whether you accepted, politely declined his offer, or took him up on his request to dinner another time.

It was seven days later that your friend was found on the river bank, approximately 5 miles from where you and Arsène lived.

Or rather, what was left of your friend.

When the police had found him, his remains had been picked over by the local wildlife, scattered across the river bank. According to the rumour-mongers who lived around your area, and the hisses of gossip from the housewives in your neighbourhood, some parts had been found floating on the water’s dark, crystalline surface, and others were simply strewed throughout the deep thicket of the forest.

When the discovery of a body, your friend’s body, had been located, for a whole straight week, his death had been on the front of every newspaper. His disappearance and murder was the top news story on the six o’clock news on every station; indeed, even radio talk show hosts couldn’t help themselves from tossing out possible theories related to your friend’s disappearance. Indeed, your friend’s grisly demise was the hefty source of hissed whispers of gossip, and a major noteworthy item of theories run through the rumour mill throughout the city.

Needless to say, you took your friend’s untimely demise, his murder, quite hard.

Tear stained cheeks were a new accessory to your assortment of differing shades of black, the funeral being the only thing that caused you to leave your home as you struggled to accept the grim reality that had washed upon you like a tidal wave.

You felt that you were responsible, an accomplice of some sort to the sickening story that was playing in front of you, that you, ultimately, were the cause of the man’s demise who had done nothing but be kind to you from the start.

And that made your stomach churn even thinking about the possibility.

You mentioned it as a possibility to Arsène, hoping it would ease the weight that was on your shoulders, the wedding ring glinting under the lights of the shared living room.

“Why would you think that, my love? You were nothing but supportive to him, and it’s… tragic that it ended up like this.”

You almost didn’t notice the underlying threat in his voice.

Almost.

“It’s nothing really. I just wanted to talk about it, get it off my chest so that I would feel better.”

That wasn’t a lie per se, but something on the edge, it balancing between light and dark on a thread stretched thin, so thin it was almost snapping and nearly invisible to the eye.

His hand wrapped around yours, squeezing it tightly as he watched a smile grace your lips, a smile that was clearly fake but he decided not to question at the moment, instead him bringing his lips to yours in a scorching manner, jealousy staining the kiss that left a bitter taste on your tongue.

“Of course my dear, I’m here if you need anything. I am yours after all.”

_And you are mine, even if you don’t believe it at times._

Tongues danced together after the phrase was spoken, clothes discarded to make way for a night of euphoria and bliss that would leave you reeling, no, begging for more.

He loved seeing you like this.

When you were red faced and glassy eyed, his name and other sounds spilling from your lips, marks left all over your body by him and him only, a smirk on his face as he watched you cover them up in the morning.

You were his, and that’s all you would ever be.

Mornings became mundane, stuck on permanent repeat from that point on.

You sat at the kitchen table according to schedule, your tired eyes ogling the television screen as Arsène all but lorded over the stove. The scent of bacon and eggs wafted through the sunlit kitchen as a concoction of sizzles and pops came from the frying pan, and three slices of toast popped from the toaster. Soon, the water in the kettle bubbled as a distinct click came as the kettle’s mechanism shut off, a sign that the water it contained was piping hot and ready to be poured at a moment’s notice.

You were in the throes of nodding off at the table when a plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast was set in front of you, and after that a cup of your favourite beverage was set before you as well.

“Here you are, my dear. Just as you like it,” Arsène said, stooping down to press a kiss to your cheek.

You stiffened as he looped an arm over your shoulders, bringing you closer to him, but if he noticed it, he didn’t say anything. However, his red irises glinted when you didn’t say anything.

“Darling, when someone does something for you… _What do you say_?”

Darkness. There was darkness in his voice. His voice that oozed an abysmal tone, hissing shadows as he smiled pleasantly at you.

You swallowed before your mouth opened, a response at the ready.

“T-Thank you, sweetheart.”

Oh, how it pained you to speak words of thanks, words of meaningless gratitude to him… You knew what he’d done to your friend, you knew what he’d been doing after what happened to your friend, and yet you kept silent. 

You’d be lying if you said that you didn’t fear for your life, but…

It was the fear of his unpredictable nature that overpowered the uncertainty of whether or not you’d live, if you breathed a whisper of what you knew. You had no honest clue what he’d do if you went to the police, if you dared to say anything about it to anyone, so you kept your mouth shut.

A soft chuckle snapped you out of your barely-aware stupor. Arsène’s chuckle.

“There’s my lovely, dutiful wife… If anyone else were to be called “sweetheart” by you… Things could become quite troublesome, couldn’t they?”

“Y-Yes, honey.” Your response was quick, thoughtless, but you were truthful.

Things could indeed become troublesome if a man became too close to you. Any man who wasn’t your husband, Arsène Lupin.

“In other news, local authorities were notified of another body by the river bank early this morning. This is the latest development in the string of on-going murders. Police are looking into the possibility of a serial killer and…”

Despite the sun pouring into the kitchen, you felt as though all source of light had been sucked out of your life.

Despite your husband peppering your face with soft, affectionate kisses, you felt hollow, empty, soulless.

Despite the honeyed, sugarcoated words he cooed into your ear as he stroked your hair, a content smile pulling his lips apart to show a teasing hint of pearly whites, you felt disgusting, dirty, and defiled.

“You’re so beautiful,” Arsène muttered, his fingers holding your chin as he tilted your face up so that your gaze met his crimson leer.

“I can’t believe you’re mine, my dear rose.”

The last thin tendon of your dwindling sanity was snipped by a pair of invisible scissors, and you felt the cold shackles adorning your wrists grow tight as you felt a similar pair of icy steel clamp around your ankles.

_This is Hell. I’m in Hell. I’ve been in Hell all along, haven’t I? I have a jealous devil for a husband._


End file.
